Yuletide 2017

[minebyrights]

Happy Yuletide!! Whoever you are and whatever canon(s) brought you here, I hope you find this pleasing, rewarding, and low on stress.

The following skirts the lines of TL;DR, but I want to emphasize up front that I am genuinely in love with all of these fandoms, as well as desperate for content for them, so anything you produce that doesn't hit my squicks will be A++. Prompts are mostly me throwing wild ideas at the walls and seeing what sticks; if you have something roiling around in your brain you really want to do that doesn’t hit squicks/DNWs, go for it! In general, all ratings from gen to depraved NC-17 porn are good, and all gender combos are fine for background ships or whatnot.

Any differences in length of section below are due to different numbers of ships per fandom and also writing this piecemeal over a couple days and not because I'm more excited for some canons over others!

If you want to find me in the wild, I'm:
theoldgods
theoldgods
minebyrights
minebyrights

And with that, on to the letter itself!

Likes and Dislikes | The Americans (TV 2013) | Atomic Blonde (2017) | Kingsman (Movies) RPF | Les liaisons dangereuses | Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos | Rome (TV 2005) | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

LIKES AND DISLIKES

Likes: worldbuilding, Holmes/Watson dynamics, undercover work and casefic, bedsharing, huddling for warmth, fake relationships/fake married, bickering and bantering like old marrieds, clothing descriptions (especially period clothing, suits, kilts, tall boots), hands and feet, bathing and cleaning one another, adrenaline junkies and partners in crime, found families, snow/winter/autumn settings, 5+1s/vignettes with some thematic growth/resonance, daemons, clothed sex, frottage/intercrural/nonpenetrative sex, dubcon (sex pollen etc), light/casual BDSM (especially with subby men), topping from the bottom, oral sex, dirty talk, threesomes, masturbation, outdoor sex, voyeurism/exhibitionism

Please no: first or second person POV, pregnancy/childfic, deathfic, angst without some light at the end of the tunnel, horror/gore, character bashing, AUs (except canon divergence, future fic, and daemon AUs), tentacles, body horror/extreme body modification, omegaverse, rape/noncon, bodily fluids/watersports, sexual degradation of women for kink (exception is some femslash--see below where relevant)

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THE AMERICANS (TV 2013)
Elizabeth Jennings

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I love Elizabeth so much--her brutal ideological devotion to the Soviet Union/the idea of communism (and is it cracking at all?), her deadliness, and yet the honest love she's capable of feeling for Philip, Gregory, her children, her mother, etc. As a result I'd be happy with just about any fic centered on her and her life story, as long as it's not too unrelentingly grimdark: What was her life like before her father's death? What about snippets from her and her mother's relationship? What about her first days in the US with Philip? What about meeting Gregory? What about her meeting Arkady or Oleg or Nina somehow, even for a moment? What about her with Young-hee or some other woman? Pretty much all ships, or none, and all ratings welcome, so long as it explores Elizabeth in some way.

What I Love: I love The Americans for so many reasons: the period piece setting, their flawless use of 70s and 80s music, the subtle pisstakes they do of Reagan, the gray morality/use of antiheroes, the deliberate blurring of lines and parallels between Americans and Soviets (both legal and illegal) and their relationships with their governments, the action, the black humor, the absurd wigs and costuming. I also love basically all characters, so feel free to use them as you see fit to fill out Elizabeth's story; I'm especially fond of her and Philip and the desperate need they have for one another even when the love itself isn't there, her and Gregory and the wild ideological passion they shared, her and Paige and what it’s like slowly unspooling her life for her daughter, her and her mother (Elizabeth on her knees for her!!!!), her and Young-hee (a friend!! With so many similarities they were never allowed to explore!), and her and their handlers (especially Claudia, whom she reviles half the time and yet is drawn to as another woman in the game, and Gabriel, especially her baring herself to him in s4). I also adore the Rezidentura group (especially Arkady/Nina/Oleg/Tatiana), so I'd love to see the illegal Soviets interact with the aboveboard Soviets, even if only for a minute. I also love Elizabeth in action, the question of her American family and children vs. her devotion to communism, those little moments of her coming close to or actually just breaking down and how she brutally picks herself up afterward, and wondering at how things were after their American arrival but before the series starts (was it less intense then, before Reagan?). A little bit of action and classic spy tropes? Some vignettes/5+1s tracking her relationship to something over the years? Honeypots? Go wild.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• What was Elizabeth and Philip's wedding night and/or earlier relationship like? Anything with them developing their relationship, either in one moment or across the years, would be great--it's okay, despite my general dislike of pregnancy/childfic mentioned above, to mention Paige and Henry and Elizabeth's canonical emotional confusion toward them (remember how she told Zhukov she was pregnant the second time before she told Philip? That's super interesting to me!), but please don't linger on that.
  
• How do Elizabeth's relationships with their various handlers differ? She is comfortable with Gabriel and was antagonistic toward Claudia, but how has that changed? Is Gabriel different toward them in S3/S4/S5 compared to how he was precanon? Did Elizabeth's relationship with Claudia and the betrayal of trust that period involved change any of that/how she sees handlers and Moscow Centre in general? Does Elizabeth feel differently toward Gabriel after the glanders scare and his letting them "vacation" in S4? Does Elizabeth see Claudia differently after they decide to leave in S5 and Philip’s breakdown?
  
• What would Elizabeth meeting Arkady/Nina/Oleg in the flesh look like? What if they met and didn't realize until afterward what had happened? How are the relationships between Directorate S agents and the Rezidentura in general? Elizabeth called that one time, but beyond that they don't really seem to have contact--would another emergency of some sort force it? Did they speak at all after the Martha shakedown in S4? I'm especially intrigued by the idea of a dangerous doesn't-officially-exist Directorate S agent meeting the Rezident himself.
  
• What was Elizabeth's relationship with her mother like through the years? We've seen bits of it, her mother's toughness and general unsentimentality, but more scenes are always welcome. When she gets the recording at the beginning of S3, is that the first time they've spoken since her departure, or have they communicated over the years? And how did her father fit into this before his untimely death?
  
• Elizabeth and Paige got to bond over beating people up in S4 and over Elizabeth’s rape in S5, even as Elizabeth (and Philip) are low-key running Paige into the ground by bringing her in on the double act. How does mother-daughter work (or not work) after Paige learns the truth? More self-defense lessons? Teaching Paige how to use a gun? Paige learning violence from someone aside from Elizabeth and how Elizabeth feels about it?
  
• I really loved Young-hee in S4, and I felt so extremely bad for her (never knowing what would become of "Patty") and, yeah, bad for Elizabeth for having to do something she really, aggressively did not want to do there. I loved how you could tell that Elizabeth--Nadezhda--genuinely liked her as a person, not just within the Patty persona and how it got to tear Elizabeth up, emotionally, while also giving us such a good side character in Young-hee, how they could relate over being immigrants (even though only Elizabeth knew they were both immigrants). Any scenes of their evolving friendship and its duplicity would be fantastic, and if you want to Go There and have them make-out/fuck/whatever, I'm also completely on board.
  
• What does Elizabeth think of the sex work they must do? She canonically is abused by marks and takes it, to Philip's dawning horror, and she and Claudia speak of how things are harder for female agents in this respect, but I love honeypots as a trope and would love to see an exploration of it with regard to Elizabeth. Does she ever honeypot women? Does she ever feel sorry, even momentarily, for certain victims? How does it seep into her sex for pleasure with Philip or Gregory (or any others; I don't think I have any NOTPs for her)?

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ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)
Delphine Lasalle

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I loved the late Cold War neon punchy-shooty angsty woman spy aesthetic here, the various games of betrayal, the bathing in ice and fucking other women against walls and bedspreads in thigh-highs. I’d love more about Delphine in particular: What drew her to spywork? What else has she done in Berlin? (More of her on missions, either being competent or fumbling them some with her newness, would be great.) Has she always had a fascination for cameras? What does she make or Lorraine--does she sense that Lorraine is a double/triple agent? What other women (or men; I’m happy to read her as either bi/pan or as lesbian) has she picked up in Berlin? Does she have extensive experience with Percival or other British agents? You can keep to canon if you want in terms of her ending (I wasn’t a huge fan, obviously, since I love her as a character, but it didn’t personally bother me too much considering the genre), but if you want to retcon or fix-it or make her go down even more heroically, I’m totally okay with that too.

What I Love: I really loved the absurdly neon aesthetics here, women bathing in ice, how sleek and modern (well, 80s-style modern; I find 80s technology, as someone born in the early 90s, absolutely hilarious and fascinating) a lot of things were, as well as the slight grunge touch. I’m a huge spy fiction fan, of both the Bondian and the Le Carre types, so I love all the spy tropes here (Sexy lingerie over recorders! Shooty-punchy fights! Taking dodgy pictures! Running through theaters! Cars drowning in rivers! Shoes with daggers in them! Physically improbable action moves! Emotionally closed off protagonists!) and I love applying them to women (hardscrabble/inscrutable/unapologetically cold female characters like Lorraine are very much my jam, but I also love that applied and refracted through Delphine, Delphine’s own issues, and her relationship with Lorraine). I loved Delphine’s lust for Lorraine, her willingness to help her even at the expense of her own life, while we as the audience also got a sense of Delphine as someone very much exposed and on the edge in Berlin, maybe someone not truly meant for spying but also maybe someone whom more time would have helped to become an excellent spy on her own terms.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• Why did Delphine get into espionage? What was her family life like? (Does she come from a family that’s originally of French colonial extraction? Would that affect how she relates to France as a nation and how/why she wants to spy for them?) Is she too secretly a double or triple agent or what have you? What are her loyalties, beyond her attraction to Lorraine? Does she like her handlers or no? Does she like other spies aside from Lorraine?
  
• Delphine on other missions in Berlin, in other European cities, what have you--her photographing, her running other agents or being run by her handler, her doing honeytraps for other women or for men. Also, Delphine running into other characters aside from Lorraine; how much does she know of Percival and his game in Berlin? Or Soviet agents in the area? Does she have a past of her own with Percival?
  
• What does Delphine truly know of Lorraine? Does she suspect Lorraine’s triple-agent-ness in her gut, even if she can’t articulate it? Does she know and decide that she doesn’t care anyway, that she’ll do whatever for….peace, or something like it, or some attempt at stability in the area? Does her lust for Lorraine overwhelm everything else in Delphine’s considerations?
  
• Delphine survives. What becomes of her and Lorraine? Does she learn of Lorraine’s true game/her true status as an American? Does Lorraine tell her, or does Delphine learn from someone/somewhere else? If Lorraine doesn’t tell her, does that ruin Delphine’s feelings for Lorraine, or just complicate them? Do they separate/have a bad falling out and them somehow end up back together, either angstily/just for hatesex or more compatibly?
  
• If you want to go down a darker route, I’d love to see a postcanon continuation where Delphine survives, finds out about Lorraine’s true game, and nurses a hatred toward Lorraine that results in hatesex/her getting Lorraine in trouble in the field somewhere in the future/them ending up on opposite sides of the intelligence game fence and possibly having to go up against one another. (I’d prefer you not have one kill the other in this situation, but plenty of angst and an otherwise unhappy/uncertain ending would be fine.)
  
• What if Delphine and not Lorraine were the double/triple agent--what if Delphine, in essence, were the more morally compromised one secretly being run by the Americans, with ties to the Soviet Union? You could have a full role-reversal with Lorraine or simply more of a case where Lorraine is still an MI6 agent trying to find a mole in East Berlin but is secretly being foiled (reluctantly or no) by Delphine, or some mash-up of their roles, however you like.
  
• Delphine and sex in general, if you want to go there or incorporate it into something else--her honeypotting other people, her being into something voyeuristic/exhibitionistic (cameras and all that), her being into some light bondage (her tying Lorraine up as punishment for the implicit betrayal? Her submitting to Lorraine for a brief moment before it all goes to hell?)
  

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KINGSMAN (MOVIES) RPF
Colin Firth, Mark Strong

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I adore these two, their on-screen chemistry, their beauty, and all the potential their many years in the acting world has for competency kink and/or long-term casual relationships. And yet, despite their slow progress toward actually being an onscreen couple in some film some day, I can find almost no fic at all for them in English. I would love any fic for them exploring their acting/them getting together/them fucking and/or being friends through the years/them blending their families/them with other costars (Julianne Moore? Taron Egerton? Pedro Pascal?)/essentially anything at all. My only hard request is to either write in an AU where they're not married, to make them have happy, loving open/poly relationships with their current wives (my personal fave), or to make them amicably divorced; please no cheating/infidelity/bashing of the wives!

Primers: Actors Colin Firth (imdb|wiki) and Mark Strong (imdb|wiki) have been in five films together: Fever Pitch (1997), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Before I Go to Sleep (2014), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) (a wide range that is well encapsulated in this gifset and this one). They are close age compatriots (Colin is 3 years older), both live in London with their fairly powerful/prominent wives (producers, filmmakers, activists), have children roughly the same ages, love Arsenal FC together, and have had connections throughout their careers (Mark claims Colin in 1982 inadvertently inspired him to become an actor). Besides the films mentioned above, you can see bits and pieces of their dynamic in the links I've compiled in this Google Doc (to save space). Their pairing name is "Firthstrong" (sometimes “Strongfirth”), though it's thin on the ground in Anglophone fandom (I've reblogged some to my tumblr tag). Their two most popular character pairings are Bill Haydon/Jim Prideaux ("haydeaux," from TTSS) and Harry Hart/Merlin ("merlahad," from Kingsman), and there are a number of random potential crossovers mentioned in the above Google Doc.

What I Love: I love these two together on screen, in all films where they share screen time, the indefinable chemistry they have that translates well from friends (Fever Pitch, Kingsman) to lovers (TTSS) to borderline enemies (Before I Go to Sleep); they are comfortable with one another, and it shows. (I eagerly await the day they are not only lovers on screen but actually physically get to act that, as this FFA thread encapsulates.) They are both skilled, consummate actors who have been around the block a long time by 2017; they both speak foreign languages near fluently (Colin speaks Italian thanks to his wife and bilingual children; Mark speaks German thanks to an Austrian grandmother; please imagine them talking dirty to one another in these languages!!) and have spent significant time abroad (Colin lives part of the year in Italy; Mark went to university in Germany for a while). I love how even in their separate films, quite a number line up in terms of time period/characterization, making potential crossovers and general AU aesthetic inspiration easy. They aesthetically are each perfect in my eyes, and thus perfect to imagine together, in a sort of "comfortable-pair-of-really-nice-shoes" way; it's easy for me to imagine them being friends or more over the years, in a not-exclusive but nonetheless potent and heartwarming way, yelling at Arsenal games, discussing their craft occasionally (although I don't know too much about the inner workings of Hollywood, I do find it really fascinating), and sharing their families' good will. Free/open relationships, and imagining their (gorgeous) wives also occasionally playing, is a huge bonus for me with them.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• What hijinks do they get up to as two of the older members of the Kingsman cast, with a bunch of young upstart noobs around them? Colin has offered Taron career advice; has Mark? Have they tag-teamed him? How about them on the set of TGC or Kingsman 3? Is there (or was there during filming) a Colin-Mark-Taron group text chat? Give me all the "like a married couple" shit imaginable on set; bonus points for some annoying "dad" behavior with Taron, Sophie, etc. (This tweet pretty much encapsulates a lot of this bullet point for me.)
  
• Any situation with them planning/blocking out scenes where their characters are lovers (be it implicit like with TTSS chemistry or in some future film where their characters have a canonical kiss/sex scene, like the Kingsman movie in my head that will totally reveal a twenty-year-old Harry/Merlin relationship). Method acting encouraged. Bits of meta-ness are okay, but please no scenes where they mention/explore fan territory (fic, vids, tumblr, etc); explicitly crossing the streams is a "no" for me.
  
• They have a casual sex relationship, no strings attached, either before they meet their wives or current day with their wives' blessing. Do they use it for stress relief? To sate desire for cock? Do they have certain relationship rituals they find themselves doing (consciously or not) each time they work on a film? (Fucking in a certain place, buying extravagant dinners to celebrate wrapping, etc.)
  
• They first meet (Fever Pitch era?) and don't really know each other, and yet they find themselves having weird anonymous sex with this other dude. Who turns out to be a coworker on that next project, oops. Cue awkwardness/working through it/hot casual sex in seedy establishments.
  
• They have open relationships with their wives (or crazy four-way poly relationships, whatever!), a fact that isn't widely known. They're generally circumspect with one another, yet someone (Taron? Sophie? Pedro? Halle?) discovers them Getting Into It on the Kingsman set/in their trailers and freaks out a bit thinking they're witnessing infidelity. They convince the onlooker otherwise, using whatever means of persuasion you find most stimulating.
  
• AU without their current wives where they're in a relationship all along (since Fever Pitch or whenever you like) and become a low-key power couple in the British acting world.

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LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES | DANGEROUS LIAISONS - CHODERLOS DE LACLOS
Marquise de Merteuil

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I love the decadence of the underlying society, the grotesque riches involved, the constant social posturing and boredom that leads to the amoral insanity in the first place, the aesthetics of letter-writing and affairs and disgusting luxury and long hair on men and crazy balls and dresses. Everyone is an actor in an enormous play, with public vs. private personas and vicious stakes hidden underneath the laconic witticisms exchanged, and that is so fun to play with. I particularly love Merteuil, so richly characterized, protofeminist in a sense (her search for agency/respect/revenge) and yet self-serving and horribly wretched toward other women. I’m familiar with the book, the Frears movie, and the Hampton stage play and like all three, though I’m personally partial toward the Hampton ending when it comes to Merteuil’s specific fate (if you’re familiar with it and also enjoy it). Epistolary fic, as well as first-person fic, is welcome for this canon, though not at all required, and feel free to use Isabelle and the like as first names if you like, though overall I have no name preferences.

What I Love: I love the richness of the general #aesthetic, the wasteful luxury and ridiculous gowns and long hair tied back in ribbons and men challenging each other to pointless duels and the stench of ~~moral corruption~ and sexual licentiousness underneath it all. I love Merteuil, her self-made determination not to succumb to the societal horrors of womanhood as much as is possible within the restraints she’s given and yet the viciousness she has for other members of her own sex, her ability to survive like a snake even if she must do so in disgrace (depending on what version of canon you go with). Surviving by her beauty and her wits, making herself into an actor on stage constantly in order to survive in their super-performative society, is fascinating to me, and I’m very much into the power being the scenes/the unassuming being privately terrible and powerful in general, so she fits that archetype well. I love her vicious hate-love with Valmont and her attempts to avoid being pulled down by any sort of weakness she might hold for him, but I also love her fascination with Cecile even as Merteuil ruins her, her apparently blithe and easy use of Danceny, and the idea of her with other women in general.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• Merteuil’s childhood or her marriage to the Marquis--I’d love more scenes of her making herself, her first sexual encounters, learning how to pleasure herself and others, how she feels about her husband in general and how she begins weaving her web of attempted agency after his death. What were her parents like? What specifically did she read to learn more about the world and how to behave in it? Her self-harming slightly, as some versions imply, to learn to control her facial expressions is fine to include/explore if you like.
  
• I really love Merteuil and Valmont’s combined awfulness, the base level of amoral manipulation each has and how it combines into an enormous mess, the underlying emotions from their past that Merteuil successfully manages to leverage against Valmont while not remaining unaffected herself (IMO, anyway). Anything continuing in that canon vein is great, be it more friendly/based in camaraderie or more savage/vicious/jealous like at the end of canon when the wheels finally come off the carriage. Their first time meeting? Merteuil domming Valmont? Merteuil’s more private thoughts of Valmont when they’re not together? Other people they’ve teamed up to attempt to ruin over the years?
  
• I really love the underlying affection, of a sort, she has for Cecile, though probably the more correct word is “fascination,” describing Merteuil’s amusement at Cecile’s antics until the spell finally breaks and she realizes how comparatively dull (read: moral after all) Cecile is. Any sort of look at Merteuil’s manipulation of her, and Cecile coming to recognize it for what it is or not, is welcome, playing with that pull of fascination and subsumated lust that come out at certain lines in Merteuil’s letters. More fun with them at the opera? Merteuil teaching Cecile sexual practices? Cecile managing to inartfully seduce Merteuil, in a way? Dubcon bordering on outright noncon is fine here, considering how brutal canon is on those points and how badly Merteuil mindfucks Cecile in canon, including Cecile being naive and/or overwhelmed by Merteuil’s experience.
  
• I find it interesting how Merteuil is able to use Danceny as a boytoy in a way she doesn’t with anyone else—there’s a certain comfort there, perhaps because Danceny means so little to Merteuil emotionally compared to Valmont or even to Cecile. What does she really think of him? Danceny sexually servicing her, and she teaching him further tricks of a sort, would be fascinating. And does Danceny really care at all about Merteuil, considering how his heart is with Cecile? What is he getting out of it—fascination? Education? Her initially seducing him would be great, as would his opinion of her behavior and how he sees her (Does he know exactly how depraved she is? Does he come to know over time?)
  
• Surely Merteuil has had some sort of run in with other women before--another young girl she practiced with before they began seeing men? (Sharing beds with other young women?) AU where Merteuil is at a convent (before canon? Or she gets sent there as some sort of penance postcanon?) and becomes involved with another woman there in all sorts of fucked up ways? I’d also love to see a Merteuil (probably younger/precanon in this situation?) who is not as sure of herself yet and gets taken under some other powerful woman’s hand and/or is manipulated by another woman herself and how that might affect her self-development. Or even Merteuil having a relatively egalitarian (though still probably somewhat spiky/manipulative, Merteuil being Merteuil) relationship with another woman her own age during the canon timeline.
  
• Merteuil managing to seduce Tourvel instead of Valmont (or doing so while they’re both at Madame de Rosamonde’s?) would be fascinating. Some sort of hatesex? (Is Tourvel super guilty? Does she think of it differently from how cheating with a man would be due to societal interpretations/not being taught to take female sex desires seriously or something?) Merteuil having mentored Tourvel at some point like how she currently has Cecile? AU where Tourvel survives and comes to Merteuil to bitch her out for getting Valmont killed and then they have...angsty hatesex of some sort, or Tourvel manages to weaken Merteuil the way she appears to weaken Valmont?
  

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ROME (TV 2005)
Servilia of the Junii

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I love the visual aesthetics of canon, the glorious Roman cityscape and the costumes and jewelry and elaborate hair teasing and social posturing and sprawling cast and scope and mythology/religious/political rites/rituals and the strong sense of family and vengeance. I love Servilia in particular, her Lady Macbeth-ing of Brutus and her attempts to gain agency/respect/revenge, all wrapped up in a more stoic and matronly outside with a strong undercurrent of fascination and seduction, albeit in a much less flashy way than with Atia. I am familiar with but rusty in the historical period and the Latin language, so if you’re really into that and want to throw other stuff in, that’s great, but I’m also fine with just sticking to history and characterization as canon presents it, including the relatively soapy tone and scope.

What I Love: I love Servilia’s controlled facade masking her very real and at times tempestuous emotions and how she uses that mild, proper, matronly exterior to attempt to exert influence/find agency/get what she needs and wants. (I love her hair, the long curls against her clothing.) I love her use of religion and religious rituals, from cursing to worshipping to her ties to the family death masks. I love her domineering and bitterly loving relationship with Brutus as she uses the conspiracy for revenge, her presence as the only woman amongst all those men, the implication that she wrote the note that ended up on the Senate door (ghostwriting for Brutus as she’s denied her own voice in Roman society). Her hateship with Atia is maybe my favorite part of the entire series, and yet I love her with Octavia too (which went on for some time?) and her using “weaving” as a front for sexual conduct. I love her beating Caesar at dice and kicking over the dice board, that moment of high-spirited freeness and wantonness before it’s all crushed. I love her and Eleni, the strange tenderness that’s spread between them despite Eleni’s place as a slave and Eleni acting to protect her mistress down until the very end.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• What was Servilia’s young life like, her relationship to her parents or siblings? What was her marriage into the Junii clan like, her relationship with Brutus’s father? Servilia being taught things as a child, her first sexual encounters, her marriage and wedding night, her attempting to control things from an early age…
  
• What was her relationship with Brutus like when he was a child? Has she always been domineering and controlling, or has that gotten worse over the years? How do she and Brutus relate to Caesar when Brutus is still a child?
  
• More of her relationship with Caesar at the high points, before canon starts, would be great--how do they interact? What does she offer him that Calpurnia cannot, both sexually and in terms of companionship? Why is Caesar drawn to her despite his better instincts even at the beginning of canon?
  
• Atia and Servilia are so awful, and so witty, and so desperately reaching out for whatever agency they can grab a hold of, and I can’t help but wonder about their past and their potential for vicious hatesex of some sort, or even some sort of more amicable relationship before they became entirely bitter. The contrast in how they try to carry themselves—spitfire/chaotic vs. dutiful/patrician—is delicious to play with, as is the overriding obsession they have, and how even after her death, Servilia manages to unsettle Atia and, indeed, appears to take away a lot of the joy she might have gotten from Octavian’s successes by managing to poison Atia’s mind. Them playing fucked up dubconny hatesex games? Them playing with bondage and the like in borderline dub/noncon ways? Them scheming with and against each other at dinner parties and other social events?
  
• Servilia corrupting Octavia is amazing to witness, but even more so for me is the question of how much Servilia was just playing her and how much it was genuine interest/lust/affection (and how much of that might have been sublimated lust/fascination with Atia). If I’m not misreading canon, they seem to have been some sort of fuckbuddy-type relationship for quite a period of time before it finally fell apart, so exploring how that developed (even though we didn’t get to see too much of it on screen due to time jumps) would be great. What else do they do besides weave? How much experience with women does either have before they start fucking each other? How much is anyone else aware of their sexual relationship? Do they fuck again somehow even after Octavia realizes she’s been played?
  
• Does Servilia have a random slave woman she uses for (mostly) consensual sexual release/sort of loves/is somewhat affectionate toward? (Eleni or someone else?) Have there been other younger women a la Octavia she’s been fascinated with despite herself? Does she have a love from childhood? Did she have an older female (sexual) mentor somehow herself she was entangled with when she was newly married, or after her husband’s demise?
  

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TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011)
Bill Haydon, Jim Prideaux

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What is happiness? It's certainly found only fleetingly in Bill and Jim's lives as seen through canon, and thus I find it all the more precious in fic. Bittersweetness and hinting at the angst to come are fine, but I'd like something before the end with these two that's at least ambiguously happy. I am constantly desperate for more fic with them, so really just about anything is fine, but if you want some jumping off points: them during the war or just after--What were their reunions like? How often did they see each other? What were their day-to-day lives like at the height of canon, before shit hit the fan--what did Jim think of Bill's other lovers? Bits from book canon welcome if you're familiar with it.

What I Love: I love spies, I love the questions of multiple selves and which is true (IMO, all are true to an extent) warring with one another. I love the melancholy attitude of canon; I always find myself rereading the books or rewatching the movie during autumn and winter, as something just seems to match up well, atmospherically. I love the Christmas party scenes, the bitter ironies constantly unraveling, the gorgeous production design and its muted palette. I love Bill's coat and flamboyant shoes and the stupid way he flips his glasses onto his face and holds his blue teacup; I love Jim's stolid face and single manly tear at the end. I love the idea of the closeness of Haydon and Prideaux throughout their years, something I imagine as borderline claustrophobic emotionally despite Bill's continuous casual infidelities (something I imagine Jim always knows about and doesn't much care about until Bill's shit lands him in Karla's hands personally), only beginning to fall apart at the end and even then with, as Oldman and Alfredson suggest on the commentary, an act that's nearly as much an act of love and bitter mercy as it is an act of hate. Is it possible to have a happier slice of time that somehow still captures bits of this melancholy, ironic, beautiful pain, the inherent contradictions between Bill's genuine (if warped) love for Jim and yet his need to make himself the low-key glamorous center of an international political drama few will ever know existed, the snowball running downhill out of control that I imagine his ten plus years of moledom are? I don't know, but I love seeing people try.

More Prompts/Ideas:

• Bill and Jim are working in the southern Mediterranean together after the war (as suggested briefly in the book) and end up spending a breathless night free together. Cue frolicking in bars, on a beach, skinny-dipping, whatever. Or weave in some actual case work, too, if you like--sometimes it's hard to imagine spies ever really having true free time.
  
• After the flashback Christmas party; Jim knows Bill has been with his hands all over Ann Smiley, and yet that, somehow, only makes him even more desperate for Bill's company/hands/mouth/dick/whatever. While I love the idea of Jim having a slight infidelity/almost cuckold-esque kink, I also like the idea of Bill being peculiarly undone by Jim despite all the other people he's had, so showing Bill's weakness for Jim even with Ann Smiley still on his skin is intoxicating to me.
  
• Bill painting/drawing Jim. One time, a 5+1 over the years, whatever. And does Jim memorialize Bill in any particular way? I'm not sure we ever hear in any version of canon about him having any particular artistic talents, but does he...show off, athletically, for Bill, or attempt to write about him in the different languages he knows, or just talk dirty to Bill in Hungarian or something?
  
• They're together at Oxford. Bill is not yet quite his slimy self, just a desperate individual weirdly in love with Jim. Are they pranking one another? Having cricket or rugby dates that turn into them desperately waiting for the rest of the team to disperse so they can get their hands on one another? Outdoor groping/sex/adrenaline-fueled confessions? It happens during winter and they have a snowball fight that turns romantic/dirty?
  
• Jim loves watching Bill with a third person--Peter Guillam? Some random OC picked up?--and loves watching Bill seduce another person...and then be taken apart by either that person or by Jim himself for his infidelity (consensual infidelity in this case, but you know the irony thing lurking in the background...)
  
• Any and all casefic with them--in the Mediterranean, in a snowy hellscape somewhere, dangerously inside the borders of the Soviet Union (is Bill double-dealing on the side? Does Jim get a sense of it even if he can't put it into words?)

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